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xp_logsThe Danger Room's a busy place these days. Nathan and Haroun take their turns, swap snarky comments, get huffy with each other, take hits, push a little too far... you know, the usual. Except then Haroun decides to bounce his head off the floor.
Haroun's Danger Room run was not going well. At all. He was in the air, taking on three aerial foes, but the foes were all armed with light-rifles, and each time one of their beams intersected with his body, a nasty buzz would sound and a point would be tallied in their favor. Each time Haroun made contact with them, he would also score a point. At the end of a half-hour's time, the score was ninety-seven to seventeen. In the drones' favor. This did not make for a very happy Moor.
He was being nosy. He knew that. His session didn't start for another fifteen minutes, and he ought to be waiting downstairs outside the door, rather than up here in the booth watching Haroun. Nathan had wanted to make a couple of tweaks to his program, though, and this was the best place to do it. If he wound up watching Haroun a little while the computer was chewing over the alterations, so what.
Haroun had passed through angry and was in Full-On Righteously Pissed Off mode. Unfortunately for him, this made him a fairly easy target as he tried to pin one of the drones down while the other two gleefully rained shots down on his back. In just fifteen seconds, three drones had been reduced down to two, but the score had changed to one hundred and four to twenty-one. Against.
There ought to be a mercy rule for Danger Room sessions, Nathan thought. This was not all that much fun to watch. He checked his watch, shaking his head.
Haroun spent the rest of the time available to him doing an aerial dance that would have given military-grade radar systems a blown fuse. The score didn't change - for either him or the drones. Finally, a buzzer sounded to mark the end of the run. The drones landed and disappeared back into their housings, and Haroun landed and then poked at his midsection with a wince. "Fuck!" he said to no one in particular.
Nathan shook his head again and pushed the button for the exterior mike. "You all right?"
Haroun whirled around to stare up at the booth. "No, I'm not fucking all right." he growled. "Chemical burn on my right side. Not serious, but I pushed some of those turns too hard. Give me a second to treat it and I'll clear the Room."
Nathan growled under his breath and stomped out of the booth. Fine. Haroun wanted to snap at him for a simple question? All right. He could handle that.
Haroun made his way over to the medkit and prepped all the things he'd need to cover the burn until it healed. Chemburn goo, clean bandages, the usual stuff. He applied the goo, ignoring the cold slimy feel of it, then covered the burn with a clean bandage and then taped that to his flesh so that it wouldn't move. He then packed up the medkit and replaced it, making a mental note to mention it to Madelyn when he next saw her. The burn goo levels were running low.
Outside the door, Nathan was checking his uniform, for lack of anything better to do, and growling angrily in Askani under his breath. Clear the room already, he thought balefully, glaring at the still-closed doors.
Haroun heard that thought - Nathan really needed to work on his telepathic shielding sometimes. ~Fuck you too, sweetheart.~ he thought back, and then opened up the door that Nathan was waiting behind. "It's all yours." he said flatly. "I've got the session after yours."
Nathan bared his teeth at him in something that might have technically classed as a smile. "I'll be out of the room on time, don't worry."
Haroun smiled sweetly. "As was I." he said, wincing just a bit as the burn made its presence known to what passed for his nervous system. "I'm gonna go hit the showers and change out before working the next program." He then walked past Nathan and into the male locker room.
There was a finite supply of drones, Nathan reminded himself as he walked into the Danger Room. No wrecking them. Otherwise Scott would nag him. The doors slid shut behind him and the program started.
His opponents were a mixture of aerial and ground-based attackers, armed with non-lethal projectile weapons. He might want to push himself, but he wasn't up to messing around trying to deflect light yet, and he knew that.
After about fifteen minutes, a very sore Haroun staggered his way into the control booth. He had some ideas on the next program to be run, a refinement on the Let's Find Out How Much You Suck chain of programs that he was working on. So far, his Lovelace values were increasing asymptotically on the wrong axis. He glanced up from time to time to watch Nathan gleefully neutralize drone after drone, and he let that mental image fuel his punishments.
No. Wrecking. Drones. Nathan took a deep, shaky breath, catching more of the rubber bullets that came his way with more difficulty. His TK was definitely odd. Different. The sort of control that used to work wasn't, and he was having a lot of trouble narrowing his focus.
Haroun gritted his teeth. He made it look so effortless - catching bullets moving at near-supersonic speeds with ease, moving in and out of firing arcs without a care in the world. He couldn't run the program he was - he'd quickly be shot senseless by the drones if he'd tried it. He found this one out the hard way yesterday. He hammered at the keyboard in front of him, tweaking the danger parameters northward. A flier versus a telekinetic was always frustrating for the flier. Ah, a better idea. May as well play to his strengths. He wiped the half-born program and started a new one. Medical pickups in a hot zone. Varied injuries, varied adversaries. It was just about all he was good for when the fur really started to fly.
He could hear Haroun stewing in the control booth. Loudly stewing. Nathan gritted his teeth. Going on and on and on and feeling heartily sorry for himself...
It, or at least his attempt to reinforce his shields to block it out, was just enough of a distraction. One of the still-engaged drones got the drop on him, and several rubber bullets hit their mark. The impact, even with the uniform, was enough to knock him sprawling.
Haroun watched Nate go down impassively. So even the Gods had feet of clay. He knew Nathan was far from a God, that he had major problems and was on the Reserves list because of them, but a small part of him sighed sadly anyway. Haroun told it to shut up as he saved the last of his program. "Five minutes." he said into the mike so that Nathan could hear him.
Oh, that was it. Absolutely it. #Then kindly SHUT THE HELL UP!# Nathan roared at him telepathically, and rolled back to his feet, seething as the rest of the drones circled him and opened fire.
Not one more hit. Not one. He focused on the path of the bullets through the air, deflecting them rather than catching them, right back at the drones. Those hits registered, and the drones deactivated themselves.
Haroun headed down the the door at the one-minute mark. He had the program queued up and ready to run as soon as he gave the word from inside the Room itself. He waited, far more patiently than Nathan did, for him to finish clearing the Room for the next person to use it.
Nathan came stalking out of the Room, glaring in obvious fury at Haroun. "Was I distracting you?" he demanded. "Did I feel the need to remind you of the time? NO! I kept my fucking mouth shut and my brain to myself until you were done!"
"Guess you need to work shielding, then, because I wasn't projecting." he said calmly. Inside his head, though, was another story. "Room's clear?" he asked pleasantly, trying to see around the bigger man.
Son of a... "Yes!" Nathan snarled at him. "The fucking Room's clear. Have fun." He stepped around him and stomped off to his locker. He was starting to feel the impact of the bullets now. Charming.
"Thrill a minute." he said as he walked into the Room and began his program. After that, he was far too busy doing medevacs of various people to really spend much time what galaxy had flown up Nathan's ass. But after the fifth time rescuing Alison from a shattered back or Lorna from having her eyes blasted out, he was getting tired, And tired Moors make mistakes.
Sitting on the bench in the locker room, Nathan was coping with the rather unsettling fact that he could follow the action in the Danger Room from here. Haroun really wasn't actually projecting, and Nathan's own shields were reasonably steady... what was going on? He could even sense Haroun starting to wear down.
Haroun's mistake was a small one, but an important one. He was flying bot-Moira out, of all people, after she had apparently tried and failed to restart bot-Piotr's heart. She'd caught a round through the thigh and thus couldn't walk on her own. He cut a turn a little too close, and _something_ swatted him out of the sky. He hit the ground hard, awkwardly, and not even his last-minute breakfall could keep his head from bouncing like a basketball. Lights out for him, and the Room obediently turned itself off after thirty seconds.
Fuck! Nathan bolted for the Danger Room, already calling out telepathically to medlab for Hank or Madelyn or whoever was on duty... Hank. It took him a moment to get the door open and he rushed over to where Haroun was sprawled on the ground.
"And they call me an idiot," he gritted, crouching down to check him.
He was already starting to come to when Nathan got to him. "Fuck." he said, inadvertantly spitting blood from where he'd cut the inside of his mouth. "Thought I had that turn covered."
"Clearly you didn't. Stay still - you went down pretty hard," Nathan said, simultaneously updating Hank.
"Should have." he said with a sigh. "Fucked up on medevacs means two or more go down if I go down." he said laboriously, trying to sit upright despite his head screaming at him.
Not pulling out his hair. Really. "Lie down. Or do I have to sit on you?" Nathan grated.
"May have to sit on me. Gotta clear the Room for the next person." he said, trying to stand upright and only making it to one knee before the room started really pounding in time with his pulse. "Gotta pull my own weight." he said haphazardly.
Hitting the man with the head injury was not an option, Nathan acknowledged to himself. "Haroun," he said, his eyes narrowing a little. Well, this had worked pretty well at New Year's with Moira... #Go to sleep,# he sent forcefully, getting in position to catch him if he toppled.
Haroun fought off the first message - his brain was odd with the neural interface implants and whatnot, and he was very mildly concussed on top of all of that. "No. Stay out of my brain." he growled, sounding eerily like Logan for a moment. Still he yawned deeply after he spoke and seemed to be seriously considering taking a nap right there in the Room.
#You're tired. Lie down on the nice floor and close your eyes.#
One suggestion could be resisted. Two was just far too much. Haroun did as instructed, and soon was out cold.
"I need to practice that more," Nathan murmured, and sat down to wait for Hank.
Afterwards, in the medlab, Nathan gets to explain what happened to Alison.
Nathan was waiting for Hank to reemerge from the exam room with news of just how badly Haroun had concussed himself when he sensed Alison. In the elevator. Yeah, the new and improved telepathy was going to take some getting used to. He grimaced a bit, and found a chair, rubbing at his chest where there were likely some fairly impressive bruises developing beneath the leather.
What was it with those two and being determined to outdo her in lack of self-confidence, Alison wondered not so idly, thoughts firmly locked down to 'not thinking about this too much until I get the facts' even though she knew she was radiating tension. And probably some. Exiting the elevator she walked down the hallway to the medlab, every stride precise and measured, the running shoes not really making much noise at all, leaving Alison with a faintly regretful feeling at that. The hard clack of heels on the floor as she marched down the hallway would have been rather nice right now.
"Hank's in with him," Nathan said as soon as she walked through the door. "I don't think he's too badly hurt. He came to almost as soon as I got there from the locker room." He wanted to make sure she knew that he wasn't the one who'd introduced Haroun to the floor.
"Tell me there was no sparring," she told him pleasantly, even smiling at him to boot. There had been no sparring scheduled that she knew of, and she knew the training schedule very well indeed these days. If there had been no sparring, then he could tell her the rest, she decided. It was very magnanimous of her.
"No sparring. Just a session of mine, sandwiched between two of his on the schedule. That's why I was there." He caught himself rubbing at his chest again and stopped, lowering his hand. "He was doing a medevac program and missed a turn."
"Two?" She blinked. There hadn't been two when she'd checked this morning, though she'd seen the medevac one and cautiously hoped. Apparently, it hadn't been cautious enough. "I'll just sit down now and let you explain what happened to me, yeah?"
Nathan nodded and went through it with her as if he was giving a briefing. Which he was, he supposed. "... so I was monitoring him unintentionally from the locker room," he said. "I'm glad I did, now. Why isn't the Room equipped to sound some kind of alarm when something like this happens?"
"It is. Link to the medlab and the emergency beepers the med staff all have, too. I'll check why the securities weren't on afterwards." Or she'd ask Haroun. That should be interesting. "They're usually on by default and buried in the interface system so no one goes wandering over to turn them off." Well. Someone had. She paused, then frowned a bit. "Unintentionally from the locker room?"
Nathan sighed. "My range is increasing," he said simply. "Or at least, my sensitivity within range - I haven't tested for distance yet, obviously. But Charles said this might happen with the psionic scarring gone." He looked in the direction of the exam room. "I can hear everything Hank's thinking. Haroun's conscious, too. Groggy. Did I mention I had to knock him out telepathically because he wouldn't stay put?"
"Nope, you hadn't." If there was any annoyance at that, it was mostly directed towards Haroun for not staying put. "That's fine. Better that than more self-abuse." Alison took a slow breath, looking at the door of the medlab as though she might be able to see through it. "Let me talk to him first, please?"
"Of course. I wasn't planning on even saying boo to him until at least tomorrow," Nathan said with a very slight smile. "Besides. I doubt he'll listen to me anyway. I don't 'get' it."
"Thank you." He'd have to listen to someone at one point, or else Alison was looking at possibly barring him from Danger Room practice until the point got across somehow and she did not want to have to go there. The team vs personal life was biting her in the butt, hard. Lovely. She didn't even consider thinking any further on it though, instead going Not Thinking and trying Waiting instead.
"Scott," Nathan said, 'hearing' far more of her train of thought than he really should have. "I was about to say 'if it comes to that', but maybe now would be better."
"No." If there was one thing that was clear, this was it. "I can't do that. My team mate, my second in command. This is something I have to work out with him." And of course he would be hearing whatever she thought, until he re-adjusted to the new levels of telepathy, and Alison found she didn't care what he picked up or not from her. "If we're going to date and work together as a command team, I'm can't avoid the command side of things just because there's someone else who could take the slack."
"Point," he said, glad that he didn't have that problem to deal with, "but I'm not sure how good any of us could be at addressing the fundamental issues behind it." He realized he was rubbing at his chest again. "There's no fix. And he's so damned stubborn..."
"No, there's no fix like what he'd want now. But time and common sense might help there." Neither option reassured her, really. Neither did the prospect of having to out stubborn Haroun on the issue - but stubborn Alison could do. And being able to do something seemed so fundamentally important on so many levels...
Nathan tilted his head in the direction of the exam room again. "He's okay," he said. "And I really have to stop doing that." He gave his head a little shake and then rose. "I should go. Don't want to be a source of aggravation, if he's pissed that I knocked him out."
Looking back towards the door, Alison nodded absently. "Thanks for bringing him in," she murmured, focusing on the other side of the door as though she might see through it.
Nathan reached down and squeezed her shoulder briefly, before he headed for the door.
Haroun's Danger Room run was not going well. At all. He was in the air, taking on three aerial foes, but the foes were all armed with light-rifles, and each time one of their beams intersected with his body, a nasty buzz would sound and a point would be tallied in their favor. Each time Haroun made contact with them, he would also score a point. At the end of a half-hour's time, the score was ninety-seven to seventeen. In the drones' favor. This did not make for a very happy Moor.
He was being nosy. He knew that. His session didn't start for another fifteen minutes, and he ought to be waiting downstairs outside the door, rather than up here in the booth watching Haroun. Nathan had wanted to make a couple of tweaks to his program, though, and this was the best place to do it. If he wound up watching Haroun a little while the computer was chewing over the alterations, so what.
Haroun had passed through angry and was in Full-On Righteously Pissed Off mode. Unfortunately for him, this made him a fairly easy target as he tried to pin one of the drones down while the other two gleefully rained shots down on his back. In just fifteen seconds, three drones had been reduced down to two, but the score had changed to one hundred and four to twenty-one. Against.
There ought to be a mercy rule for Danger Room sessions, Nathan thought. This was not all that much fun to watch. He checked his watch, shaking his head.
Haroun spent the rest of the time available to him doing an aerial dance that would have given military-grade radar systems a blown fuse. The score didn't change - for either him or the drones. Finally, a buzzer sounded to mark the end of the run. The drones landed and disappeared back into their housings, and Haroun landed and then poked at his midsection with a wince. "Fuck!" he said to no one in particular.
Nathan shook his head again and pushed the button for the exterior mike. "You all right?"
Haroun whirled around to stare up at the booth. "No, I'm not fucking all right." he growled. "Chemical burn on my right side. Not serious, but I pushed some of those turns too hard. Give me a second to treat it and I'll clear the Room."
Nathan growled under his breath and stomped out of the booth. Fine. Haroun wanted to snap at him for a simple question? All right. He could handle that.
Haroun made his way over to the medkit and prepped all the things he'd need to cover the burn until it healed. Chemburn goo, clean bandages, the usual stuff. He applied the goo, ignoring the cold slimy feel of it, then covered the burn with a clean bandage and then taped that to his flesh so that it wouldn't move. He then packed up the medkit and replaced it, making a mental note to mention it to Madelyn when he next saw her. The burn goo levels were running low.
Outside the door, Nathan was checking his uniform, for lack of anything better to do, and growling angrily in Askani under his breath. Clear the room already, he thought balefully, glaring at the still-closed doors.
Haroun heard that thought - Nathan really needed to work on his telepathic shielding sometimes. ~Fuck you too, sweetheart.~ he thought back, and then opened up the door that Nathan was waiting behind. "It's all yours." he said flatly. "I've got the session after yours."
Nathan bared his teeth at him in something that might have technically classed as a smile. "I'll be out of the room on time, don't worry."
Haroun smiled sweetly. "As was I." he said, wincing just a bit as the burn made its presence known to what passed for his nervous system. "I'm gonna go hit the showers and change out before working the next program." He then walked past Nathan and into the male locker room.
There was a finite supply of drones, Nathan reminded himself as he walked into the Danger Room. No wrecking them. Otherwise Scott would nag him. The doors slid shut behind him and the program started.
His opponents were a mixture of aerial and ground-based attackers, armed with non-lethal projectile weapons. He might want to push himself, but he wasn't up to messing around trying to deflect light yet, and he knew that.
After about fifteen minutes, a very sore Haroun staggered his way into the control booth. He had some ideas on the next program to be run, a refinement on the Let's Find Out How Much You Suck chain of programs that he was working on. So far, his Lovelace values were increasing asymptotically on the wrong axis. He glanced up from time to time to watch Nathan gleefully neutralize drone after drone, and he let that mental image fuel his punishments.
No. Wrecking. Drones. Nathan took a deep, shaky breath, catching more of the rubber bullets that came his way with more difficulty. His TK was definitely odd. Different. The sort of control that used to work wasn't, and he was having a lot of trouble narrowing his focus.
Haroun gritted his teeth. He made it look so effortless - catching bullets moving at near-supersonic speeds with ease, moving in and out of firing arcs without a care in the world. He couldn't run the program he was - he'd quickly be shot senseless by the drones if he'd tried it. He found this one out the hard way yesterday. He hammered at the keyboard in front of him, tweaking the danger parameters northward. A flier versus a telekinetic was always frustrating for the flier. Ah, a better idea. May as well play to his strengths. He wiped the half-born program and started a new one. Medical pickups in a hot zone. Varied injuries, varied adversaries. It was just about all he was good for when the fur really started to fly.
He could hear Haroun stewing in the control booth. Loudly stewing. Nathan gritted his teeth. Going on and on and on and feeling heartily sorry for himself...
It, or at least his attempt to reinforce his shields to block it out, was just enough of a distraction. One of the still-engaged drones got the drop on him, and several rubber bullets hit their mark. The impact, even with the uniform, was enough to knock him sprawling.
Haroun watched Nate go down impassively. So even the Gods had feet of clay. He knew Nathan was far from a God, that he had major problems and was on the Reserves list because of them, but a small part of him sighed sadly anyway. Haroun told it to shut up as he saved the last of his program. "Five minutes." he said into the mike so that Nathan could hear him.
Oh, that was it. Absolutely it. #Then kindly SHUT THE HELL UP!# Nathan roared at him telepathically, and rolled back to his feet, seething as the rest of the drones circled him and opened fire.
Not one more hit. Not one. He focused on the path of the bullets through the air, deflecting them rather than catching them, right back at the drones. Those hits registered, and the drones deactivated themselves.
Haroun headed down the the door at the one-minute mark. He had the program queued up and ready to run as soon as he gave the word from inside the Room itself. He waited, far more patiently than Nathan did, for him to finish clearing the Room for the next person to use it.
Nathan came stalking out of the Room, glaring in obvious fury at Haroun. "Was I distracting you?" he demanded. "Did I feel the need to remind you of the time? NO! I kept my fucking mouth shut and my brain to myself until you were done!"
"Guess you need to work shielding, then, because I wasn't projecting." he said calmly. Inside his head, though, was another story. "Room's clear?" he asked pleasantly, trying to see around the bigger man.
Son of a... "Yes!" Nathan snarled at him. "The fucking Room's clear. Have fun." He stepped around him and stomped off to his locker. He was starting to feel the impact of the bullets now. Charming.
"Thrill a minute." he said as he walked into the Room and began his program. After that, he was far too busy doing medevacs of various people to really spend much time what galaxy had flown up Nathan's ass. But after the fifth time rescuing Alison from a shattered back or Lorna from having her eyes blasted out, he was getting tired, And tired Moors make mistakes.
Sitting on the bench in the locker room, Nathan was coping with the rather unsettling fact that he could follow the action in the Danger Room from here. Haroun really wasn't actually projecting, and Nathan's own shields were reasonably steady... what was going on? He could even sense Haroun starting to wear down.
Haroun's mistake was a small one, but an important one. He was flying bot-Moira out, of all people, after she had apparently tried and failed to restart bot-Piotr's heart. She'd caught a round through the thigh and thus couldn't walk on her own. He cut a turn a little too close, and _something_ swatted him out of the sky. He hit the ground hard, awkwardly, and not even his last-minute breakfall could keep his head from bouncing like a basketball. Lights out for him, and the Room obediently turned itself off after thirty seconds.
Fuck! Nathan bolted for the Danger Room, already calling out telepathically to medlab for Hank or Madelyn or whoever was on duty... Hank. It took him a moment to get the door open and he rushed over to where Haroun was sprawled on the ground.
"And they call me an idiot," he gritted, crouching down to check him.
He was already starting to come to when Nathan got to him. "Fuck." he said, inadvertantly spitting blood from where he'd cut the inside of his mouth. "Thought I had that turn covered."
"Clearly you didn't. Stay still - you went down pretty hard," Nathan said, simultaneously updating Hank.
"Should have." he said with a sigh. "Fucked up on medevacs means two or more go down if I go down." he said laboriously, trying to sit upright despite his head screaming at him.
Not pulling out his hair. Really. "Lie down. Or do I have to sit on you?" Nathan grated.
"May have to sit on me. Gotta clear the Room for the next person." he said, trying to stand upright and only making it to one knee before the room started really pounding in time with his pulse. "Gotta pull my own weight." he said haphazardly.
Hitting the man with the head injury was not an option, Nathan acknowledged to himself. "Haroun," he said, his eyes narrowing a little. Well, this had worked pretty well at New Year's with Moira... #Go to sleep,# he sent forcefully, getting in position to catch him if he toppled.
Haroun fought off the first message - his brain was odd with the neural interface implants and whatnot, and he was very mildly concussed on top of all of that. "No. Stay out of my brain." he growled, sounding eerily like Logan for a moment. Still he yawned deeply after he spoke and seemed to be seriously considering taking a nap right there in the Room.
#You're tired. Lie down on the nice floor and close your eyes.#
One suggestion could be resisted. Two was just far too much. Haroun did as instructed, and soon was out cold.
"I need to practice that more," Nathan murmured, and sat down to wait for Hank.
Afterwards, in the medlab, Nathan gets to explain what happened to Alison.
Nathan was waiting for Hank to reemerge from the exam room with news of just how badly Haroun had concussed himself when he sensed Alison. In the elevator. Yeah, the new and improved telepathy was going to take some getting used to. He grimaced a bit, and found a chair, rubbing at his chest where there were likely some fairly impressive bruises developing beneath the leather.
What was it with those two and being determined to outdo her in lack of self-confidence, Alison wondered not so idly, thoughts firmly locked down to 'not thinking about this too much until I get the facts' even though she knew she was radiating tension. And probably some. Exiting the elevator she walked down the hallway to the medlab, every stride precise and measured, the running shoes not really making much noise at all, leaving Alison with a faintly regretful feeling at that. The hard clack of heels on the floor as she marched down the hallway would have been rather nice right now.
"Hank's in with him," Nathan said as soon as she walked through the door. "I don't think he's too badly hurt. He came to almost as soon as I got there from the locker room." He wanted to make sure she knew that he wasn't the one who'd introduced Haroun to the floor.
"Tell me there was no sparring," she told him pleasantly, even smiling at him to boot. There had been no sparring scheduled that she knew of, and she knew the training schedule very well indeed these days. If there had been no sparring, then he could tell her the rest, she decided. It was very magnanimous of her.
"No sparring. Just a session of mine, sandwiched between two of his on the schedule. That's why I was there." He caught himself rubbing at his chest again and stopped, lowering his hand. "He was doing a medevac program and missed a turn."
"Two?" She blinked. There hadn't been two when she'd checked this morning, though she'd seen the medevac one and cautiously hoped. Apparently, it hadn't been cautious enough. "I'll just sit down now and let you explain what happened to me, yeah?"
Nathan nodded and went through it with her as if he was giving a briefing. Which he was, he supposed. "... so I was monitoring him unintentionally from the locker room," he said. "I'm glad I did, now. Why isn't the Room equipped to sound some kind of alarm when something like this happens?"
"It is. Link to the medlab and the emergency beepers the med staff all have, too. I'll check why the securities weren't on afterwards." Or she'd ask Haroun. That should be interesting. "They're usually on by default and buried in the interface system so no one goes wandering over to turn them off." Well. Someone had. She paused, then frowned a bit. "Unintentionally from the locker room?"
Nathan sighed. "My range is increasing," he said simply. "Or at least, my sensitivity within range - I haven't tested for distance yet, obviously. But Charles said this might happen with the psionic scarring gone." He looked in the direction of the exam room. "I can hear everything Hank's thinking. Haroun's conscious, too. Groggy. Did I mention I had to knock him out telepathically because he wouldn't stay put?"
"Nope, you hadn't." If there was any annoyance at that, it was mostly directed towards Haroun for not staying put. "That's fine. Better that than more self-abuse." Alison took a slow breath, looking at the door of the medlab as though she might be able to see through it. "Let me talk to him first, please?"
"Of course. I wasn't planning on even saying boo to him until at least tomorrow," Nathan said with a very slight smile. "Besides. I doubt he'll listen to me anyway. I don't 'get' it."
"Thank you." He'd have to listen to someone at one point, or else Alison was looking at possibly barring him from Danger Room practice until the point got across somehow and she did not want to have to go there. The team vs personal life was biting her in the butt, hard. Lovely. She didn't even consider thinking any further on it though, instead going Not Thinking and trying Waiting instead.
"Scott," Nathan said, 'hearing' far more of her train of thought than he really should have. "I was about to say 'if it comes to that', but maybe now would be better."
"No." If there was one thing that was clear, this was it. "I can't do that. My team mate, my second in command. This is something I have to work out with him." And of course he would be hearing whatever she thought, until he re-adjusted to the new levels of telepathy, and Alison found she didn't care what he picked up or not from her. "If we're going to date and work together as a command team, I'm can't avoid the command side of things just because there's someone else who could take the slack."
"Point," he said, glad that he didn't have that problem to deal with, "but I'm not sure how good any of us could be at addressing the fundamental issues behind it." He realized he was rubbing at his chest again. "There's no fix. And he's so damned stubborn..."
"No, there's no fix like what he'd want now. But time and common sense might help there." Neither option reassured her, really. Neither did the prospect of having to out stubborn Haroun on the issue - but stubborn Alison could do. And being able to do something seemed so fundamentally important on so many levels...
Nathan tilted his head in the direction of the exam room again. "He's okay," he said. "And I really have to stop doing that." He gave his head a little shake and then rose. "I should go. Don't want to be a source of aggravation, if he's pissed that I knocked him out."
Looking back towards the door, Alison nodded absently. "Thanks for bringing him in," she murmured, focusing on the other side of the door as though she might see through it.
Nathan reached down and squeezed her shoulder briefly, before he headed for the door.
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